WTF Bites
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Status: VBA is still Shit.
Edit: oh right, there's the
IsNullfunction.Still, not sure why this is null. Grrr...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
Still, not sure why this is null.
Is it a property that can only be read once? Because that's totally what you want…
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
Still, not sure why this is null.
Is it a property that can only be read once? Because that's totally what you want…
I had to write something like that once except it was on set. It was a dev clutch to prevent overwriting the root of a tree that I forgot to take out. A couple of months later one of the junior devs removed it because it was "wasn't needed anymore" as degreed by a senior dev who also didn't believe in unit tests. That release was rejected because the root kept being overwritten and completely botch all the test data.
I never have any "and things went well" stories. I would probably have a few if I spoke up instead of waiting for a good tire fire.
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I never have any "and things went well" stories. I would probably have a few if I spoke up instead of waiting for a good tire fire.
But you wouldn't be able to post them to TDWTF. This isn't The Daily Things Went Well.
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@Tsaukpaetra's VBA picture said in WTF Bites:
If found <> True Then:awkward:
At least its not
found == true
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@Tsaukpaetra What about multi-threading, and some other thread having access to
rrjust changed that property?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
Still, not sure why this is null.
Is it a property that can only be read once? Because that's totally what you want…
It's supposed to be a standard fucking ListBox. Microsoft's documentation on said object is wrong, fucking wrong, or incorrect, and only through trial-and-error did I eventually get it working.
@Tsaukpaetra's VBA picture said in WTF Bites:
If found <> True Then:awkward:
It used to be just "If Not found Then" but it kept breaking so I stopped touching it.
@Tsaukpaetra's VBA picture said in WTF Bites:
If found <> True Then:awkward:
At least its not
found == trueIt could have been. But inverting such a simple if when the else hadn't been written was asking for trouble!
@BernieTheBernie said in WTF Bites:
@Tsaukpaetra What about multi-threading, and some other thread having access to
rrjust changed that property?No, nothing like that. Just that the property doesn't exist despite wish-it-were IntelliSense suggesting it is the right thing and docs saying it should be there.
Fixed it by using
ItemCountandItemsinstead. Which! Were not even ideas in the dropdown thingy.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
it kept breaking so I stopped touching it.
And when you stopped touching it, it stopped breaking? That would be ... not unexpected.
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@HardwareGeek said in WTF Bites:
@Tsaukpaetra said in WTF Bites:
it kept breaking so I stopped touching it.
And when you stopped touching it, it stopped breaking? That would be ... not unexpected.
No, I stopped touching it because <> true worked. There's a difference!
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degreed
I like this word. A portmanteau of "decreed" and "agreed", and carries with it a sense of superiority.
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I am considering upgrading my Windows laptop before the end of the year. I go looking at the Dell XPS series machines. I can choose between 8GB of RAM (which is too little for my needs) with a 1920x1200 display that purports to have ~14 hour battery life, or 16GB of RAM that only comes with a 4K display and ~8 hours of battery life.
Why can't I get 16GB of RAM with the HD+ display and nearly 50% more battery life? Why is 4K even a thing on such a small screen? I will trade battery life for resolution every single time.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
Why can't I get 16GB of RAM with the HD+ display and nearly 50% more battery life? Why is 4K even a thing on such a small screen? I will trade battery life for resolution every single time.
Because the invisible hand is flipping you the bird is why.
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@LaoC what did you say? I can't get past how your avatar looks like Commie Goatse.
More likely is that the invisible hand is guided by retards that are swayed by "OMG 4K!!!" than they are by long battery life. I would wager that most laptops spend 99% of their time plugged in and it wouldn't even matter if they had a battery at all. Of the businesses we support, the ones that deploy laptops 80% use them like expensive shitty desktops with small displays and poor ergonomics, 15% use them as easy to transport desktops to facilitate work from home and at very most 5% of them are ever used unplugged for any significant amount of time.
I don't get my preferred option because I use a laptop like they were designed to be used and I value long battery life because I have a shitty memory and frequently forget to charge my stuff.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
at very most 5% of them are ever used unplugged for any significant amount of time.
Even at home, I am this comment. That is, it's almost always plugged in.
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@dcon I am currently working from our dining room table, unplugged.
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@Polygeekery So, it's like an expensive shitty desktop with a small display and poor ergonomics combined with a space that isn't for work and has likewise poor ergonomics for doing so?
I don't like laptops for work. Give me a real machine. And a real desk space.
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So, it's like an expensive shitty desktop with a small display and poor ergonomics combined with a space that isn't for work and has likewise poor ergonomics for doing so?
I also have a desktop downstairs in my office. I opened this up to take care of a quick issue and never moved myself.
But:
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@Polygeekery That said, I'm with you on the tiny 4k screen front. That's a lot of extra performance (and power) needed to drive something with dubious utility.
(I have a Surface with a high res screen. And I'd trade that for normal Full HD and a bit better perf when e.g. scrolling and flipping through stuff.)
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I can't get past how your avatar looks like Commie Goatse.
Filed under: things I did not need to be unable to unsee.
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@Polygeekery So, it's like an expensive shitty desktop with a small display and poor ergonomics combined with a space that isn't for work and has likewise poor ergonomics for doing so?
I don't like laptops for work. Give me a real machine. And a real desk space.
Yeah. I have my work machine (a macbook pro, 17") on a dock, plugged in, with an external 32", 4k monitor and keyboard and mouse. It spends roughly 0% of the time unplugged.
Over on the other desk is a home-built PC I use for real tasks (ie games and D&D/D&D prep). It has a separate mouse, keyboard, and 2 monitors, although those are the older 24" 1080p ones.
They only share a chair.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
Yeah. I have my work machine (a macbook pro, 17") on a dock, plugged in, with an external 32", 4k monitor and keyboard and mouse. It spends roughly 0% of the time unplugged.
That sort of makes sense though. Apple has pretty shit options for desktops for lots of use cases. Although, in your use case, an iMac would have been cheaper if you never take the MacBook anywhere.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I am currently
workingwasting time on TDWTF from our dining room table, unplugged.FTFY
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@TimeBandit yeah, but I am billing someone for it, so it is still
work
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
Yeah. I have my work machine (a macbook pro, 17") on a dock, plugged in, with an external 32", 4k monitor and keyboard and mouse. It spends roughly 0% of the time unplugged.
That sort of makes sense though. Apple has pretty shit options for desktops for lots of use cases. Although, in your use case, an iMac would have been cheaper if you never take the MacBook anywhere.
Company bought it, so... We've been working from home now since I started. And I think the idea was that we could be portable if we wanted to--I know the managers (among others) spend a lot of time moving around. And once the new office space is built, we'll be in the office at least 2 days a week.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
And I think the idea was that we could be portable if we wanted to
When VDI became a thing I went all-in. It seemed like such a great technology and should have been an easy sell for companies. Run all of your desktops on a hypervisor, employees could use thin clients in the office and there would be a web portal for them to login to their instance from home. One image to update, simplified management, great performance, significantly lower costs and TCO, etc.
But no one would buy because they would rather field a shit ton of laptops that were used like portable desktops, because raisins. The companies that did buy are still running their systems and love them and I wish I never sold the fucking things because we still have to support these one-offs and I am virtually the only person who knows anything about them.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
And I think the idea was that we could be portable if we wanted to
When VDI became a thing I went all-in. It seemed like such a great technology and should have been an easy sell for companies. Run all of your desktops on a hypervisor, employees could use thin clients in the office and there would be a web portal for them to login to their instance from home. One image to update, simplified management, great performance, significantly lower costs and TCO, etc.
But no one would buy because they would rather field a shit ton of laptops that were used like portable desktops, because raisins. The companies that did buy are still running their systems and love them and I wish I never sold the fucking things because we still have to support these one-offs and I am virtually the only person who knows anything about them.
We do a lot of docker stuff that involves mucking around with local containers as well as mobile app development. I'd hate to do all of that behind a couple VDI connections even with a solid internet connection.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
I'd hate to do all of that behind a couple VDI connections even with a solid internet connection.
Why? It is no difference than doing the same over SSH or RDP or the like. You're doing all the heavy lifting on an overpowered server somewhere and only sending the presentation layer to the user.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
I'd hate to do all of that behind a couple VDI connections even with a solid internet connection.
Why? It is no difference than doing the same over SSH or RDP or the like. You're doing all the heavy lifting on an overpowered server somewhere and only sending the presentation layer to the user.
Right. But that introduces a whole extra latency hop at minimum. And it's kinda hard to plug in a testing device or manipulate it when it's all the way over there in a remote server room. Native mobile app development really needs local access. Especially xCode.
Edit: and some times I have to do really
things to my docker environment to test edge cases. Which means frankencobbling things together and abusing my local network. Which isn't something I'd want to do in a VM--Docker inside VMs is already a bit annoying to deal with.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
I'd hate to do all of that behind a couple VDI connections even with a solid internet connection.
Why? It is no difference than doing the same over SSH or RDP or the like. You're doing all the heavy lifting on an overpowered server somewhere and only sending the presentation layer to the user.
I fucking wish. Worked for two companies using this technology. Whatever their setup was it wasn't an overpowered server somewhere. Both companies were cheapskates and provisioned the equivalent of a core2duo with spinning rust and 16 gigs of ram for their developers. Ram was plenty but the rest of it was awful. They must have provisioned them somewhere in Australia too the network latency was so bad.
It's a great concept though. Solve the latency problem and the last mile is convincing companies that some of us can put the equivalent of a ryzen r7 to good use.
*edit I suspect most of those 10 - 15 minute build problems are probably io though. An SSD may be of more value.
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I fucking wish. Worked for two companies using this technology. Whatever their setup was it wasn't an overpowered server somewhere.
Had similar experience. Even if the setup starts out overpowered on paper, it rarely stays that way. Before the machine(s) materialize, specs get slightly downgraded. Then there's a few more users. And N years down the line, the previously overpowered setup is now regularly outperformed by a smartphone (but upgrading it is a big investment).
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How do you know a company is desperate?
We are now ready to deploy the backup development servers to the public lobby servers, which will improve the capacity management of the lobby server and raise the maximum number of players in the queue to around 21,000.
To be fair, the whole announcement of the SquareEnix folks' efforts to fix the queue issues is a masterclass in taking responsibility, good communication, and general class. I don't envy them at all.
World Login Errors and Resolutions | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone
World Login Errors and Resolutions
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@Benjamin-Hall There's also this:
This doesn't exactly communicate technical competence.
Hmm. I've never seen that. What are you using? Lynx? Or do you have No-script turned on.
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@Benjamin-Hall The full text of the announcement (spoilered for length):
Hello, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer & Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV.Thank you all for participating in the Early Access and official launch of Endwalker.
Since the start of Early Access, we have been seeing an unprecedented number of active players, the highest ever seen since the launch of FFXIV, as well as record numbers of simultaneous logins, but along with this, the number of connections has far surpassed the scale of our services which has resulted in long wait times when attempting to log in.
Even during this congestion, we’ve received words of support and encouragement, for which we’re truly grateful. Thank you very much. On the other hand, we sincerely apologize for the long waiting times and the resulting frustration experienced by players attempting to log in.I’d like to share some information regarding the ongoing congestion, the reasons behind errors that have been appearing while waiting in queues, and the current status of our fixes. For information on error codes not listed below, please see https://sqex.to/QDFMi on December 5.
Lobby server maintenance to address errors
Allow me to share some information regarding specific errors. We are planning for a full maintenance on the lobby servers at the earliest timing possible, in order to resolve these errors. Although the maintenance time isn’t fully solidified, it is estimated to take about 30 minutes. This will not affect any players who are already logged into the game, but during these 30 minutes, players will not be able to make new login attempts, and the login queue will be unavailable.
We deeply apologize for this but ask for your cooperation as we address these server errors. The exact maintenance times will be shared in an upcoming announcement.
All Worlds Maintenance
On Tuesday, December 7, we will be conducting maintenance across all Worlds to address server errors aside from those mentioned above, as well as a few issues that can be resolved on the server side. This requires all servers to go offline and is estimated to take about four hours to complete. Details on maintenance timing will be announced in the future. I’d like to ask for your understanding and cooperation regarding this matter as well.
Below are some details regarding errors that have been occurring as a result of congestion.
Disconnects by Error 4004 right before logging in
Currently, I believe the most frustrating cases are when you’ve been waiting in the queue and get disconnected by an error when your turn comes around, forcing you join the queue again from the end. These disconnects are often happening as a result of Error 4004 and 3001, and here I’d like to provide the details and statuses of countermeasures against Error 4004.
How the Process Works
To prevent servers from going down as a result of mass logins or overloading, the process of logging into a World that has reached the login cap involves waiting until the World can admit 100 players, then admitting the first 100 players in the login queue, a process that is being repeated constantly.
The Issue
We have confirmed an issue during the process of admitting these 100 players, which can occur if certain conditions coincide while the servers are experiencing extremely high loads, which will cause up to 25% of these players to receive an error. This issue is not guaranteed to occur even when the servers are experiencing extremely high loads, and the number of players who experience the issue varies. However, considering login queues can take up to several hours and this error can cause players to have to return to the back of the queue, we currently recognize this as the most frustrating issue.
- Added: Dec. 7, 06:20 a.m. PST
This fix has been implemented, but I would like to clarify some things in relation to the on-screen display. Worlds that reach the login limit will be checked for 100 available positions, and 100 new logins will be executed sequentially. However, since the maximum number of characters that can log in to a World in the space of one minute sequentially is limited to 75 in order to reduce the load, the number of people in the queue will often appear to decrease by 75 in the on-screen display. (This is how it will appear when there is a clean overlap in the update timing of the displayed number of players waiting.) This has been the way the system operates from before, and even if the processing is carried out properly with the fix this time, the maximum count will decrease by 75 each in the dialogue, making it look as if the aforementioned fix has failed. Due to the coincidental overlap in the numbers, I apologize for any confusion my choice of words may cause.
Resolving the Issue
We have been able to locate the cause of this error, which occurs due to extremely high server loads, and are currently fixing the source code for the lobby servers. Although the fix itself is finished, the process of checking whether the fix has actually resolved this issue requires time as it is an extremely complex process. In addition, due to the complexity of the conditions of occurrence itself, it is possible that we have not yet addressed more specific conditions, but we will implement the fixes and continue to monitor the situation. As soon as our preparations are ready, we will carry out the work through the aforementioned lobby server maintenance. We ask that you wait a little longer until the fix is made.
Disconnects by Error 3001 right before logging in
I’d also like to provide the details and countermeasures for Error 3001.
Error 3001 Cause #1
A login cap is in place on every World in order to prevent them from going down due to high loads. Despite this, a number of extremely overloaded servers have allowed players to log in beyond this cap, resulting in the number of permitted lobby server connections to fail and cause Error 3001 and disconnect players in the queue.
Resolution for Cause #1
We currently have a general idea of what is causing this issue with extremely overloaded Worlds, and a fix is underway. However, these are areas where complex processing is carried out and careful fixing is required for this process. As such, fixing/confirming/implementation into the lobby server will require time. This will be implemented in the maintenance scheduled for December 8, and we are putting our full effort into it, but haven’t been able to determine the full details. Further details regarding this will be announced at a later timing as well.
Error 3001 Cause #2
This is an issue that is occurring only on the Tonberry World on the Elemental data center. The Tonberry World has the largest number of login requests of all the game Worlds, and players are helping to mitigate this issue by using the World Visit System and logging into other Worlds. However, due to the way chat connections work when using the World Visit System, we cannot completely cut off a player’s connection with their character’s Home World, causing the total number of active connections to become enormous, and we have confirmed that as a result, a situation similar to Cause #1 above can occur.
Resolution for Cause #2
Although we are aware of the relative risk of the Tonberry World going down, we’ve increased the number of network connections to its absolute maximum. Your patience would be greatly appreciated as we monitor the situation based on this tentative fix for the time being.
Error 2002
Now I would like to explain about the details related to Error 2002 and our countermeasures.
Details of the Process
In order to prevent a major login server outage, FFXIV has a limit of "no more than 17,000 total players waiting to log in per logical data center". This cap is set uniformly regardless of how many Worlds exist in a logical data center.
The Issue
If the total number of players waiting in the logical data center exceeds 17,000, Error 2002 will be displayed and you will not be able to queue for login.
The Resolution for this Issue
We are now ready to deploy the backup development servers to the public lobby servers, which will improve the capacity management of the lobby server and raise the maximum number of players in the queue to around 21,000. Since this will not require any maintenance, we will err on the side of caution and proceed with the deployment outside of peak hours. It is scheduled to be completed late in the night of December 7, Japan time.
Measures Towards a Fundamental Resolution for Congestion
When it comes to fundamental measures to prevent this type of large-scale congestion—and this is something that was brought up in the https://sqex.to/4IkYs we made ahead of early access—the most effective method would be a “large-scale addition of new Worlds in all regions.”
On the one hand, following the explosive rise in players coming to FFXIV beginning in spring 2021, we spent over half a year scrambling to address the need to add new Worlds. However, due to policies surrounding COVID-19, which have had an effect on the entire world, even now we have been unable to procure the required hardware for adding new Worlds.
The Global Semiconductor Shortage (Supply Chain Issues)
When it comes to adding new Worlds, we need tens of “server machines” for every World that we add. Server machines are high-performance computers, which utilize numerous semiconductors. However, due to the COVID-19 countermeasures currently in place, many factories across the globe which produce semiconductors have halted production, or have faced labor shortages.This has ultimately led to a decrease in the number of semiconductors being produced, and has resulted in a worldwide semiconductor shortage.
Furthermore, this does not only pertain to the production of semiconductors, but from a logistics standpoint as well, COVID-19 countermeasures continue to explosively push up demand and create this turbulent situation. We have made considerable investment—even more so than usual—to secure the required hardware, but even so, a long lead time will be needed to prepare the server hardware.
If we try to look to when this semiconductor shortage may be solved, unfortunately given the state of things, we aren’t able to estimate when we might reach a resolution. The FFXIV Server and Infrastructure teams accelerated work to implement the additional high-performance machines we had secured, as well as optimizing the server source code and increasing the number of maximum logins per World. I promise that we will continue to put in this type of effort.
Given the current situation, we anticipate that it may take several months or more to add new Worlds. I want to express my sincerest apologies to all of our players for the inconvenience this is causing. I appreciate your continued understanding and support regarding this matter.
- Added: Dec. 7, 06:20 a.m. PST
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@Benjamin-Hall Firefox on Linux. Ghostery.
Edit: FWIW, at least they give you the option to go ahead and view the page anyway. It forgets which page you were exactly trying to view in the process, though.
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@Benjamin-Hall Firefox on Linux. Ghostery.
So yeah. Probably blocking some JS they want. I'll say that the Lodestone itself is not part of the main play team, and yeah, isn't great.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
So yeah. Probably blocking some JS they want.
Nope - tried disabling it, same thing. I guess they might be sniffing the OS/browser?
Edit: OS most likely. Chromium has the same thing.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
So yeah. Probably blocking some JS they want.
Nope - tried disabling it, same thing. I guess they might be sniffing the OS/browser?
I don't have a linux machine and it works fine on my mac and my windows machine in both chrome and FF with an add blocker.
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I guess they might be sniffing the OS/browser?
Of course. Because that always works so well.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in WTF Bites:
So yeah. Probably blocking some JS they want.
Nope - tried disabling it, same thing. I guess they might be sniffing the OS/browser?
Edit: OS most likely. Chromium has the same thing.
Possibly, they're looking for machines on which they support the actual game client. Which doesn't include Linux. Note: this is still a
, but I can see a glimmer of logic--the client they're visiting the website from is likely the same one they're trying to play on, and they don't want to deal with support questions (which go through that same system) about "this doesn't work! What are you using? Linux. Not Supported."Note: it does work, however, from mobile (at least android chrome), so that makes that more sensible. By epsilon. No one expects (I hope) to run the client on a mobile phone.
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@Polygeekery said in WTF Bites:
I can't get past how your avatar looks like Commie Goatse.
Filed under: things I did not need to be unable to unsee.
You mean that wasn't the intention?!
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Somebody needed a click-bait story.
Google is working on making Chromebooks less sluggish at startup
ARCVM can hog up to 300 percent of the CPU before you even open an Android app.
It seems that the Android Runtime for Chrome Virtual Machine (ARCVM) can hog the Chromebook's CPU . . . . eating up to 300 percent (three cores times 100 percent) of the processor's resources "for several minutes."
No, that's not how numbers and percentages work. 100% of 3 cores is . . . . 100% of 3 cores. It isn't 300 percent of anything.
If a device has 4 cores, then using 100% of 3 cores means you are using 75% of available cores. Still not 300 percent of anything.
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No, that's not how numbers and percentages work. 100% of 3 cores is . . . . 100% of 3 cores. It isn't 300 percent of anything.
Blame Apple:
What does it mean when a %CPU exceeds (# of cores) x 100%?
Several responses to a question I asked earlier suggested I try Opera kiosk mode, so I decided to download it and give it a try. Once the download had completed and the disk image was being verified,
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@Zerosquare others struggle with it too.
https://aaron-margosis.medium.com/task-managers-cpu-numbers-are-all-but-meaningless-2d165b421e43
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@TimeBandit no
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Somebody needed a click-bait story.
Google is working on making Chromebooks less sluggish at startup
ARCVM can hog up to 300 percent of the CPU before you even open an Android app.
It seems that the Android Runtime for Chrome Virtual Machine (ARCVM) can hog the Chromebook's CPU . . . . eating up to 300 percent (three cores times 100 percent) of the processor's resources "for several minutes."
No, that's not how numbers and percentages work. 100% of 3 cores is . . . . 100% of 3 cores. It isn't 300 percent of anything.
If a device has 4 cores, then using 100% of 3 cores means you are using 75% of available cores. Still not 300 percent of anything.
The metric makes sense when you are considering single threads.
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The metric makes sense when you are considering single threads.
Nope. Still not 300 percent of anything.
